Pressure ulcers are a vast and growing problem in the United States and account for {tilde over ( )}$10 billion dollars in annual health care spending. In 2008, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services discontinued reimbursement for hospital-acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs), thus increasing the demand for early-stage prevention. Each year, over 1 million patients will suffer from a hospital-acquired pressure ulcer. Pressure ulcers occur most commonly in the elderly, which is the fastest-growing segment of the population. As a result, the number of patients at risk for developing pressure ulcers is expected to increase dramatically in the coining decades. Given the tremendous burden that pressure ulcers place on the healthcare system, there is a substantial need for improved prevention methods.
Pressure ulcers, also known as bedsores, can form when there is sustained pressure on a given area of the body. This unrelieved pressure causes compression of tissues and impairs blood flow to affected areas. If the surface pressure is not relieved, the resulting shortage of blood flow can lead to localized tissue damage and cell death. Pressure ulcers initially appear as areas of reddened skin, but can quickly develop into large open wounds if left untreated.
Pressure ulcers are a source of significant morbidity and mortality for patients. Pressure ulcer treatment begins with a comprehensive review of a patient's general health and an assessment of their wound. General treatment principles include positioning patients such that little or no pressure is placed on the ulcer, using pressure-relieving physical support apparatuses, optimizing nutritional status, and utilizing a myriad of advanced wound care modalities and wound dressing technologies. More specific treatment goals depend on the stage of the pressure ulcer, and range from applying skin protective dressings to surgical closure of the wound and skin grafting. The development of a hospital-acquired pressure ulcer may highlight the need to review, refine and intensify an institution's pressure ulcer prevention procedures.
To prevent pressure ulcers, the currently accepted standard of care is to turn high-risk patients at least every 2 hours, day and night. In many healthcare facilities, such a turning schedule can be difficult to maintain. Studies have shown that caregiver compliance with patient turning protocols is low and a high percentage of patients are not being turned appropriately.
Some explanations for this low compliance include difficulty monitoring patient position, ineffective turn reminders/alerts, and sub-optimal caregiver staffing ratios all of which hinder efforts to prevent pressure ulcers. To further exacerbate the problem, as the population ages, the percent of patients requiring turning is increasing, and yet there is a growing shortage of nursing staff, making it increasingly difficult to maintain compliance with prescribed turning schedules.
In addition, for patients with ambulatory challenges, bed exits and falls can present a serious risk of injury. Such bed exits and falls can present significant care and liability issues for hospitals, assisted living institutions, hospices, and regular homes where a patient is being cared for. Elderly patients, or patients who are disoriented, or patients who have overestimated their condition, all too frequently seek to exit their beds when their physical abilities are not at the level necessary to either stand up or walk.
Bed exits and falls have in the past proven particularly challenging to manage, because prompt detection has been difficult. Monitoring systems for bed exits have proven unreliable, at least in part because such systems typically do not detect the preliminary movements that indicate a forthcoming exit by a patient who is likely to fall upon exiting the bed. Likewise, systems for detecting falls have not had great success, in part because falls can occur slowly, and involve relatively short distances between the bed and either the floor or some intermediate object.
The costs associated with a fall can be enormous, including loss of life or serious injury for the patient. From an economic standpoint, hospitals incur greatly increased costs in caring for patients injured due to a fall. Moreover, such costs are typically not reimbursed by insurance, as these hospital-acquired injuries are considered preventable. For some patients, particularly those who are easily disoriented, such as Alzheimers or dementia patients, an unexpected bed exit by even an ambulatory patient can result in that patient going missing, leading to significant consequences to both the patient and the caregiver
There is a long-felt, definite and even urgent need for a system, method and device that helps to prevent, detect, and/or treat pressure-induced ischemic and pressure ulcers by optimizing surface pressure at areas of compromised tissue perfusion. Various aspects of the present invention accomplish these objectives and substantially depart from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art.